Caller ID is a telephone service that transmits a caller's number to the called party's telephone equipment during the ringing signal, while the call is being set up but before the call is answered. Caller ID is currently available in analog and digital phone systems and most voice over Internet Protocol applications. In some cases, caller ID can also provide a name associated with the calling telephone number. The information made available to the called party may be displayed on a telephone's display, on a separately attached device, or be processed by an attached computer with appropriate interface hardware.
The popularity of Caller ID services indicates that phone users, particularly mobile phone users, are interested in knowing contextual information about a phone call while the call is pending or in progress. However, existing systems provide only a minimum of contextual information (namely, the number and possibly the name of the caller).
As increasing numbers of mobile “smart” phones become connected to the Internet, the bare-bones context provided by Caller ID has become increasingly antiquated. However, while such smart phones are theoretically able to access many other sources of rich contextual data about a caller (e.g., the caller's social-network activity), existing systems do not allow even the smartest of smart phones to access such rich contextual data sources during the few seconds while a call or similar telephonic communication is pending.